A question for older DUers and those who study history: Were repubicans always this nuts?

[Stinky The Clown]

In my experience, they were not. Certainly through Eisenhower, they were pretty much mainstream and, more importantly, reasonable.

I continue to actually think more highly than most about Nixon. That is not to defend Watergate and everything associated with it, but it is to say that he governed from a fairly moderate position and even accomplished some things held in high regard by liberals. Jerry Ford, who was Nixon's alter ego/extension was a fundamentally decent man.

But Nixon's worst effect, in my view, was not Watergate. It was his Southern Strategy. Actually, was it truly his strategy or that of some of the elves who surrounded him? I suspect it was the latter.

Anyway, when that "strategy" was loosed on America, a giant regressive step was taken. The Southern Strategy did nothing but tap into the worst of our human traits and flaws.

I could go on, but would rather hear from others.

Were repubicans always this nuts or are they worse because they are now coming from the bottom of the barrel rather than the cream at the top?

[Angry Dragon]

1. From my youth I remember sane republicans

[deutsey]

2. It was the "law and order", "Southern Strategy", anti-intellectual

types under Nixon that marked the beginning of the GOP's current descent into nuttiness.

It's hard to believe that this party was originally responsibile for some of the most radical and progressive legislation in this country after the Civil War.

[Paladin]

3. The Repubs Used To Be A Respectable Group.

The Tea Partiers have driven the party over the edge, right down to full partisan insanity mode. No telling what happens next.....

[brush]

4. 1964 Dem Convention

LBJ, believe it or not, had a lot to do with how the repug party is now constituted. In 1964 he ordered the seating of Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Democratic Party, an African American, pro-civil rights group, at the Democratic National Convention to the dismay and huge disagreement of the Southern Dixiecrats. He remarked at the time that he had probably just given away the solid south but he did the right thing. Those dixiecrats joined the Republican party and brought with them their antipathy towards blacks and blacks voting. This feeling is still being echoed in today's repug effort to suppress the urban vote in as many ways as possible. And of course the repugs have huge issues with women, Latinos, passing jobs bills, and on and on. So no, they haven't always been crazy, but they definitely are now.

[dixiegrrrrl]

43. You have an excellent point....

Until 1964, Civil rights, which was backed by Johnson in the Senate, was a much watered down issue, only token laws with little substance had been passed. ( Read Caro's bios of Johnson for details).
But in '64, all that changed, not the least reason was the massive Civil rights movement.
THAT's when the Dixiecrats went nutz, and they went further around the bend after the Women's movement.
The two "chattel" classes had demanded their freedom.
By the 1968 Convention, the tone had most defiantly changed.
IMHO, from '64 on, the political tenor had seriously shifted, it was VERY evident by '68.

I remember so clearly that by the time Nixon took office, many of us were deeply appalled what he had done to the Office of the Presidency..we were stunned by Watergate.
Today, Watergate seems almost quaint in comparison to the massive wave of criminal behavior that constitutes our government.

[coalition_unwilling]

51. Do you have sources for this version of the 1964 Dem Convention and LBJ's

remarks? I'm away from definitive secondary sources right now, but I think you are conflating and eliding a lot of history.

Specifically The MS Freedom Democratic Party was allowed to attend the convention, but only as non-voting members alongside the official state Dem delegation. LBJ did not remark 'at the time' that he had probably just given away the solid South. He made that remark shortly after passage of (or during deliberations on) the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and not in conjunction with the Democratic Convention and seating of the FDP there).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_South

[brush]

82. Sources

LBJ made the remark. I may have attributed it to the wrong event but at that time things were changing fast and all those events were interconnected. Read Robert Caro's bios on LBJ. The Freedom Democratic Party info is in there.

[dmosh42]

74. I can remember the "Committee of unamerican activities", which was a way for the Repukes....

to charge everyone, mostly Dems, with aiding the Communist party or being unpatriotic! If anyone suggested dealing with Red China,(1950s) they were sure to be hauled in for a hearing. At that time the American businessmen were fighting to keep tariffs on incoming trade to protect their business. Anything less was considered unpatriotic. Once they realized they cpould use slave labor to break unions, then we didn't mention anything about patriotism.

[Ganja Ninja]

5. The more power they got the crazier they got.

They've always had a crazy section but they didn't run the party. I think that's the difference in today's GOP vs the GOP of the 50's. Back then the GOP was strictly a corporate scam. Then we had the struggle for civil rights in the 60's and Vietnam and the Voting Rights act, That's when the Dixiecrats showed their klan roots and the GOP started courting the Dixiecrats.

[lunatica]

6. They created and nurtured the Teabag Party and it turns out to be

their worst self inflicted wound. Karma in action.

[Odin2005]

7. The crazies used to be in OUR party before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

18. Good point.

The repig party became the dumping ground for racist pigs.

Instead of standing back and reflecting or doing something about it, they nurtured it and embraced the racism, hate and bigotry.

And here we are.

[coalition_unwilling]

57. Senator Joseph McCarthy was a Republican. Can't remember

whether Father Charles Coughlin was Repig or out-and-out fascist.

[jsr]

8. I think the depravity began in earnest with Reagan

with his aggressive attacks against the poor, while showering money on the military complex like a drunken whore.

[Scuba]

48. Agreed, and welcome to DU.

[Ilsa]

69. ITA. RR also prayed at the Convention,

which caused a frissom amongst all religious Christian conservatives. They were frothing at the opportunity to turn the US into a religious state from that point on.

Before that, Jimmy Carter was the quiet, liberal Christian that republicans made fun of.

[Freddie]

102. Reagan started the unholy alliance

Between the Religious Right and the Repugs. That alone caused more damage than anything else in the modern era (IMO) and is a huge reason behind the present polarization of the parties.
Quite an achievement for a man who rarely set foot in church.

[BeyondGeography]

9. I think America was always this nuts

You have these awful original sins at the heart of it, stolen land and stolen labor, both accompanied by genocidal acts and policies sanctioned by the white majority. These have never been dealt with honestly, perhaps because the psychic price of such a reckoning would be too high. In fact, we double down on the cruelty all the time, pretending the poorest and most economically-challenged among us are what ails the economy (after weighing many of them with loans only gangsters used to make) and waging a non-stop war against any form of investment in their present and future. This is how the guilty and the complicit can feel virtuous.

Getting closer to your question, these foundational problems with big truths about ourselves opened us up to, in fact committed us to a culture of lying and avoidance behavior. Getting away with the big lie is a defining American trait and look how confused too many Americans are, how far they are from confronting the difficult truths of our times. How to invent a new form of low/no-growth community-oriented and sustainable capitalism in a world of dwindling resources? Can we even talk about it as a nation? A resounding no, because, like our problematic origins, it's too difficult and, most important, it would threaten vested interests.

We were always set up for this kind of craziness; four years after the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, we are actually contemplating electing a debt-enabled buyout pirate who won't reveal his tax returns as President. Why? Because he's not the guy who is trying to coax the country along into post-adolescence while getting the richest people in the country to be more decent Americans.

Not a direct answer, just a way of saying the problems are deep and the GOP or whatever ill-intentioned, money-enabled group of owners will always have an audience willing to go over the cliff for them.

[northoftheborder]

16. good analysis

[JDPriestly]

22. stolen land and stolen labor

Where do you find land that was not stolen, labor that is not stolen or underpaid?

Geography includes the study of migrations. Isn't every migration a sort of theft of land?

The fact is that people move around and throughout history people have taken the land that they moved into.

The Romans did it, and then the vandals and Gauls and others in Europe did it back to the Romans.

The Vikings did it. Ghengis Khan did it.

That's history.

And the feudal system? Stolen labor. Then back a little further, the Greeks and Romans had slaves. The early recorded histories talk about slavery and servants. Labor has always been stolen, borrowed. Way back until you get to maybe communal or hunter gatherer societies.

We live in a relatively enlightened world in which we at least try to pretend that we don't have slavery any more and that we don't steal land. (And yes, I know -- Iraq, and on and on, we do steal land and we do take advantage of workers.)

Is it wrong? Yes. But what is new and what can give us hope is that we know and admit that it is wrong. And some of us are even trying to change things a bit.

[BeyondGeography]

40. I'm not making a blanket indictment

Just trying to explain how one of two major political parties has gone completely off the rails while still having a hold on huge numbers of people. What we're seeing in our own country from today's GOP is the rejection of historical progress and too much complicity from all but those who are either directly affected or have the political consciousness to object.

What do you make of the systematic attempt to suppress the minority vote? This is not something a "relatively enlightened" country would ever attempt 45 years or so after the Voting Rights Act. It's a naked grab at power, but it's also an effort, conscious or not, to deny that America was ever stained by anything immoral at all. It's a child's view of history. "Those people" are frauds, they don't deserve to vote because they always vote against "us." They are cheats, inferiors in every sense of the term, denying us our destiny as superiors. The same treatment is accorded any group that doesn't go along with a simplistic and/or ignorant view of economic rights and social historical wrongs.

What we are proving, and what your own post illustrates, is that we are just another country with a messy history. But our brand is unique. Every country fights about its own history, but what other civilized nation has a national conversation about what constitutes rape in an election year? This is backwardness on a grand and awful scale and, unfortunately, it's nothing new.

[JDPriestly]

87. Agreed. It's a naked grab at power

What we are proving, and what your own post illustrates, is that we are just another country with a messy history.

But we could do so much better, and I think the younger generation will, at least when it comes to race.

[coalition_unwilling]

62. +1,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000 - Well put and definitely

needed saying. I hope you will consider fashioning your remarks into an OP - 100% spot on.

[brush]

86. Yes, yes, yes

Your post is spot on in its depth of wisdom about this country. Keep posting and keep bringing it. Sometimes even us progressives need to be reminded of how we haven't dealt with (your words): " . . . these awful original sins at the heart of it, stolen land and stolen labor, both accompanied by genocidal acts and policies sanctioned by the white majority."

[LeftinOH]

10. The comments so far are all spot on.. the two parties have switched

sides over the last 50ish years. Look the most craven bigots like Senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms -both Democrats who ultimately switched to Repubs; there were many others.

[treestar]

11. No they were sane until

Roe v. Wade. After that, the fundamentalist groups started up.

[longship]

12. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, then Tea Party.

These were the people who turned the Republicans into batshit crazy lunatics, starting in the 70's. But a lot of the stage was set by LBJ and Nixon as other posts here point out.

First, the religious take over of the party made the Reps authoritarian. That made a very rich growth medium for the crazy libertarians and the Tea Party to complete the transformation to a party based on batshit crazy ideas.

Note: there was no teabaggers under Dubya. They are new and come from the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe. The militant, racist underbelly. We've seen what they can do since 2010. They scare me more than the religious nuts.

If these guys ever get in power, we're fucked.

[JDPriestly]

23. Don't forget Goldwater and the Texas fringe.

And the Ayn Rand wrecking crew have been hovering over the nation for at least a couple of generations.

[yellowcanine]

29. Actually Goldwater was a moderate compared to this crowd.

With his views on abortion rights and gay rights he couldn't get elected to a school board as a Republican today, let alone any state or federal office.

[longship]

31. Yes, true.

Goldwater later disowned the religious right, but not very publically.

The Ayn Rand cult have indeed been around for a while. It was Reagan who first endorsed the trickle down that the libertarians love so much. I really never heard "libertarian" in political context until Reagan. But it was the teabaggers who really sunk their fully grown Ayn Randian teeth into the Republicans after Obama was elected.

The teabaggers really worry me because they are the worst of the bunch because they've consumed the whole enchilada and then some.

Thanks for your response.

[Freddie]

104. Trickle down

Has been around longer than Reagan, unfortunately. My 90-year-old Dad remembers Hoover being a "trickle-down" proponent as he refused to pass any legislation to help the poor during the early Depression that would interfere with the free market's magic. (sound familiar?) I believe "trickle down" was the expression Hoover used.
Dad (sadly starting to lose it mentally) was a good FDR/union Democrat who only lost his way once by supporting Nixon. His reasoning was, I think, the true reason Nixon won in 1968. We lived in a sleepy little town that never saw a protest or even a "dirty hippie" and Nixon promised to keep things that way. For those whose lives were sheltered from the 60s turmoil--most of the country really--that was a powerful promise.

[spiderpig]

55. I remember the Goldwater campaign:

"In your heart you know he's right"

to which the Democrats countered:

"In your guts you know he's nuts"

(Little did we know what we were in for a couple of decades later...)

[Shankapotomus]

13. I think it's a combination of

Republicans becoming crazier and Democrats becoming saner. And the saner Democrats become, the crazier Republicans get. Feedback loop.

[nanabugg]

14. No. it used to be the Dems with their Dixiecrats who are now largely the Tea Party. nt

[eridani]

99. Not really. The Teahadists are pro-1%

Old-fashioned racist Dems were anti-economic elite populists

[northoftheborder]

15. I'm old enough to remember Pearl Harbor, so I go way back.....

Absolutely NOT were Republicans always this crazy. There were always a few, and a few crazies in the Democratic Party (especially from the South) but there were always leaders who were reasonable, affable, who worked across the aisle, who put the country first. In general, the old GOP were more wealthy, comprised of professionals, the banking and wall street community, and their central viewpoints came from that place in the world. But they also favored such things as clean water and air, public safety, research - medical, space, computers, etc.. They were conservative about debt, spending, etc. but not obstructive, in general.

In my opinion, the Republican party started it's decline when it went after the votes of conservative Christians. These people have taken over the party; they have included in their public "values" not only their social beliefs, but tax policy, the role of government, etc.... which really are not matters of faith. But they have made them keys of faith and defended them with their whole heart, not wanting to compromise not only their views on abortion, but all these other issues as part of their "religion". And the old GOP have "let" them, and encouraged them, to the detriment of the old type of what I call "country club" Repubs. who had certain viewpoints about the role of government, taxes, etc.. but did not consider them part of their religion. That, in my opinion, is going to really hurt our nation, because now they are taking on the idea of separation of church and state, and are trying to rip that away. It is really dangerous. I know these people, they are all around me, in my family, etc... It is why you cannot persuade, reason, with them; these issues are their faith, and they will die before giving up.

[slackmaster]

32. My mom was a lifelong Republican until the religious conservatives took over the party in California

I remember the day she told me she was quitting. She had been very active, even worked on campaigns for state-level offices.

She had just been to a state party convention, and told me the party was being taken over by "Wild-eyed religious nuts" who were rabidly against abortion. That was the last straw for her. She is of a generation that remembers too well what things were like before Roe v Wade.

[summerschild]

84. Carl Rove's evil genius gathered the most dangerous-to-democracy coalition in our history

by solidifying the religious right into the GOP power base. They had the monied and corporate support for years, but Rove and company added the might of the religious right.

They brought with them a tremendous amount of tribalism and intolerance, and the ability to excite, unite, and organize huge numbers by manipulation of religious zeal: the stuff that fueled the Crusades, etc. The whole South was thick with fundamentalist Christians, as well as rural areas all across the country. The "Southern Strategy" was very effective among these groups and beyond.

Though Rove and crew mocked them privately (the "crazies", they called them), they played to them publicly (i.e., Bush's miraculous conversion) to gain and keep their support. No group is better at turning out votes than churches and no leaders of any sort can compete with Pat Roberson and his colleagues for intolerance and medieval thinking.

[ananda]

17. No they weren't.

Even Nixon wasn't this nuts.

Maybe the Dixiecrats who later became Reeps were:
thinking Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, that ilk.

[hifiguy]

25. Nixon's faults were a bug in his particular

personality. They weren't the core operating code of the party. Nixon was driven by feelings of inferiority and an intense jealousy of the Kennedys that eventually mushroomed into rampant paranoia. There were still a lot of liberal/moderate Repugs in Congress when the Trickster was POTUS.

[slackmaster]

30. Yes, I remember hearing Republicans describe Nixon as a "queer duck" even before Watergate

In 1968 there were plenty of people who remembered his bizarre performances in the campaign of 1960. I was a bit too young for that.

[ananda]

52. Agree.

Also it's funny because Nixon would not even be able to get
nominated or elected for anything as a Reep today.. he's be
considered a flaming liberal. LOL

[Fla Dem]

90. I don't think they are any worse. They were bastards in the 60's and they're bastards now.

John Kennedy, Ed Muskie, Michael Dukakis, Jimmy Carter; the RW slandered all of them. They made Kennedy's Catholicism a major issue, the Willie Horton ad during the Dukakis campaign. Lee Atwater and Ed Rollins were political hacks who threw anything and everything at the other side. The only difference now is social media, cable 24 hour news and political discourse. The same things were going on then as now. We just didn't hear about it as quick or with such frequency.

[yellowcanine]

33. George Wallace never became a Republican. He ran as a Democrat for all of his races for

Governor and for President with the exception of his Independent Party run for President in 1968.

[ananda]

53. True.

I did say the Dixiecrats who later turned Reep,
that's what I meant when I mentioned Wallace
and Thurmond.

[loyalsister]

71. It's way different

republican Pres. Chester Arthur was elected after having represented a black woman to desegregate the NYC transit system. Imagine the FB explosion over that candidacy.

And even in the early 70s, some of the people who supported segregation were not always driven by hate, and would find points of agreement with people who supported civil rights.
Shirley Chisholm visited George Wallace in the hospital during he presidential campaign. Later, he helped get her votes on minimum wage legislation.

Obviously, there have always been rabidly hateful people and politicians. But, I think some who were closeted have become more comfortable with their racism after seeing the reactions to Obama. And, the number of legislators who have had the good sense to not go out of their way to represent them has declined.

[WilliamPitt]

19. Research John Birch

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

47. Interestingly, while I was growing up we lived across the street

from the town dog catcher. He was older and semi-retired. He had two children; one of which was a flower child who would breath fire against authority.

"You can't tell me what to do!"

She later left to go find herself in the mid 70s.

She met a guy out west and the became higher ups in the JB movement.


Quite a 180.

She came back in the mid eighties, and yes she was one of the crazies by then.


That's when I saw the changes starting as the kool-aid was starting to be distributed freely by he right wing to satisfy their right of right base.

[Romulox]

20. Much of the old-guard Republicans have taken over our Party as "Centrist" Democrats. Same people.

Same policies.

[amandabeech]

89. Yup. n/t

[RegieRocker]

21. Not just yes, but hell yes.

They closeted their beliefs back then to most people. They have all come out of woodwork like cockroaches.

[hifiguy]

24. No way. When I was young there were plenty of

reasonable, moderately conservative Republicans both nationally and in my state. They used to be called "Rockefeller Republicans" after NY Gov Nelson Rockefeller. Generally they were moderate to conservative on fiscal issues and moderate to liberal on social issues. I don't remember anything like the religulous kooks being in the Repub parth of the 1960s and most of the 1970s, much less controlling the party.

Back in the 1960s William F. Buckley basically read the John Birch Society out of the Repub party. Not that Buckley was any particular apostle of enlightened liberalism, but he knew kooks when he saw them. While they were booted from the Republican party, the kooks never went away, they just went underground. Which left the national Republican party in the hands of center-right adults. One could disagree civilly with them, and there were even many liberals in the national party. Ed Brooke, Charles Percy, Charles Mathias, Bob Packwood - the Rockefeller wing of the party remained a force to be reckoned with if not necessarily the dominant players.

Nixon's Southern Strategy opened the door for the racist elements, and constituted an invitation to the mossback Dixiecrats to make common cause with Repukes. The Bircher wing of the party began to slowly re-emerge in the mid-to-late 1970s after the religulous shitheels like Falwell and Robertson slimed their way into public life on a national scale. These two groups of reactionary crazies made common cause with each other, and it was a group Raygun assiduously courted in his first two runs for the presidency. At the same general time the most reactionary and crazy elements of the plutocracy of the time, like the Scaife and Coors families, dumped millions into "think" tanks to promote reactionary policy ideas. Richard Viguerie developed the direct mail strategy to extract enormous sums of cash from the low-IQ people mobilized by Falwell and Robertson.

Raygun tapped all these diverse but ideologically united reactionary elements to underpin his 1980 run against the luckless Jimmy Carter and the Republican party began its descent into the open air lunatic asylum that it is today.

The purges of the sane and responsible Repigs did not really start until the 1990s, though. Gingrich was a central player in this drama. Here in Minnesota the buybull thumpers began expelling (or driving away) all of the moderate elements of the party in the name of talibangelical ideology. Tolerate gays? Gone. Believe government has a constructive role to play in American life? You're out of here. Unwilling to swear eternal and unquestioning fealty to Repukelikon Jeebus? Hit the road. Women's rights? Fuhgeddabout it. Expecting the rich to pay their fair share? Begone, heretic! The remaining moderates fled in disgust. The elements which remained - the plutocrats and their useful religious idiots - took over the party completely and began charting their course for neo-feudalism (one could also call it neo-fascism) and their dream of a state that is, at its essence, theocratic totalitarianism combined with the Divine Right of the 1%.

At least that's how I remember it and I've been following politics for 40 years.

[hfojvt]

66. the odd thing though

is that having driven all of those moderates away, that Republicans can still win elections even in places like Minnesota. Isn't the state legislature Republican controlled?

I remember back in 1980 I was a freshman at the U of Mn and had some fundamentalist friends in the dorm and one of them was laughing about how they had gone to a party meeting and out-voted the old guard, and how ticked off that old guard was.

Perhaps in some ways the new candidates really did or do better represent the voters. As a Texas Democrat said about Republican legislators "If you think these people are bad, you oughta see their constituents." (paraphrase) Whereas the old guard used to be more reasonable than their constituents.

[hifiguy]

72. The hate radio/reichwing religion machine

has brainwashed a lot of people into zombiehood in the last twenty years here in MN and all across the country. People with kook beliefs used to keep quiet about them. Now that they have been encouraged and enabled by that machine they shout their kookery at the tops of their lungs from every rooftop.

The difference is that the old-time cranky conservatives - who really were conservatives then and not dangerous right wing radicals - just grumped and complained in the fashion of Abe Simpson. There was no particular religious component to it. When African Americans and women, and later gays and lesbians, began demanding to be treated as actual citizens the religulous nuts seized on that to drum up paranoia and existential fear. Given that fundamentalist religion in this country has always attracted the most ignorant segment of the population, its rise emboldened the finger-sniffers, fart-eaters and pig-ignorant. Add hate radio, the Bircher plutocrats and there you have the modern Repig party.

[brush]

88. Agreed

Lots of history here. Good, interesting read. Pls keep posting.

[GodlessBiker]

26. Nope. My aunt was a lifelong Republican. She was pro-gay, pro-choice, pro-science and learning ...

The only reason she voted Republican was her belief that Rs were more concerned with keeping inflation low, while Ds were more concerned with keeping unemployment low. She thought that inflation did more long-term damage to a society than unemployment. You could disagree with her on that point, but there were candidates she could vote for her believed like she did. Now, forget it.

[BlueToTheBone]

27. Nixon was a sleazy bastard from the git go.

His only saving grace was the clean air act. I have no idea why he did that because there wasn't any money in it. We have HMOs because he could see fleecing sick people; he expanded the bombing in SE Asia and gave us a whole raft of nasty terrible people...KKKarl Rove being a further generation of them.

Yes, Republicans have always been nuts. We laud Eisenhower for his sage words on the MIC, but he gave us Nukes for Peace. Now tell me that isn't nuts of the highest degree.

Their party has been filled with hypocrites and cowards for as long as I can remember (and I'm old.)

[slackmaster]

28. The GOP got taken over by wackos in the chaos that ensued after Nixon's resignation

At 54 I am easily old enough to remember a time when the Republican Party was not controlled by far-right extremist ideologues.

[2pooped2pop]

34. Bushco

Sure, it started decades earlier, but *Bushco was when all pretense of decency ceased to exist for them.

[slampoet]

35. I miss William F. Buckley......He was a bastard, but always explained his reasoning.

[Arkansas Granny]

36. It seems to me that they got really nuts when they let religion influence their platform.

They were conservative before that, but still willing to compromise and get things accomplished. When the fundamentalist churches started getting serious about affecting politics and the RW of the party realized they could pull a lot of votes from tapping that source, it started getting crazy. By pandering to the extremists, they have loosed a genie that they can't put back in the bottle.

[socialindependocrat]

37. Don't forget McCarthy...

I think this group is made up of a bunch of prejudiced people
who want to fight against individual freedoms.

It's hard to believe that they rally against the freedon of free choice
in favor of trying to make everyone suffer under their restrictive beliefs. It seems like they feel cheated by living their lives on a straight and narrow path if others get to do the things they restrict themselves from doing - alcohol, dancing, a normal sex life.
The restrictions they want to impost seems very similar to communism. Maybe that's why these people rally against communism - because they are latent communists! They want to dictate how everyone should live - where's the freedom of choice.

It's more important for these people to restrict the rights of others than to control their own financial progress (i.e., They'll give all their money to the wealthy as long as the wealthy promise to control the masses).

We have some very deranged people in our society!

[BumRushDaShow]

38. The nuts have always been there but

the proliferation of modern 24/7 media has actually magnified their presence and (sadly) legitimized it. What were once Dixicrats now rethugs were also a bit more violent in the past but had finally been tempered. Now they are ratcheting it back up again.

[HockeyMom]

39. I had a discussion about this with 2 young Indepependents

It started changing in the 80's with the Moral Majority (Falwell), Christian Coalition, etc. "St. Ronnie" was the first to pander to them. The rich Wall Streeters just looked the other way as long as they were getting their money. Even back then, the abortion and "family values" were their talking points. Not much about gays then. However, they said NOTHING about TRADITIONAL religious of caring for the poor, sick, elderly, even then. I suppose that is why the Republican Party, and the Rich, let them gain control because they didn't want that money going to these groups. As time went on, they got bolder and bolder, attacking the decadent culture and using legislation of their Republican officials to bring the culture back to, in my view, previous centuries of the good old christian times.

[Yavin4]

41. The Republican Party Became A Minority Party Because of the Great Depression

and FDR was elevated to hero status due to WWII. Americans grew to trust the Dems on the economy over the Republicans.

Fear of Communism allowed Republicans to gain a foot hold in America. From McCarthy to Nixon, they were seen as being tougher on the Commies than the Dems. For decades, Dems had to prove that they could be as tough on the Reds as the Republicans. This bullshit machoism is the prime motivation behind the disastrious Vietnam war.

After the electoral defeats in 1960 and 1964, the Republicans needed something else to gain traction with the electorate. They seized upon disaffected Southern Whites who were angry over the passage of Civil Rights laws. The Southern Strategy put them back on equal footing with the Dems.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter countered the Southern Strategy by being a Southerner and courting the Evangelical vote.

Finally, in 1980, Reagan put it all together, being tough on Communism, courting disaffected White Southerners, pandering to Evangelicals, and he even pulled in Nothern Whites.

[TlalocW]

42. Yes and No

The ones in charge could be sane on some issues, but if you've read, "The Family," and "C Street," by Jeff Sharlet, there has always been at least since the early 1900s, a group of power players who believe that they're ordained by God to bring about their vision of America, and they can use any method they want, and it's still all right with God. And as the regular GOP took up positions that alienated non-white old guys who migrated to the democratic tent, they and other crazies crept into the vacuum and bided their time until now.

TlalocW

[Johonny]

46. I agree, wasn't McKinley sort of the start of it

before that the Republican party was the reform party and the Democratic party sort of the power broker party. Theodore Roosevelt-Taft sort of interrupt that trend but Teddy wasn't suppose to ever be president. Same with Ike who was more in line with late 19 th century Republicans than any Republican president around him. I think from McKinley to Harding, Coolidge, Hoover then Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush you can see a pretty easy transgression from the reform party of Lincoln era to the elitist party of this era.

I think a lot of traditional Republicans somehow think the party is represented by Lincoln, Roosevelt and Ike although those figures represent the minority in that party for years now. Today the last of reforming Republicans in congress have all lost. It is hard to understand nationally how people can still pretend Republicans stand with workers, women, civil service employees... but they do?

[hifiguy]

64. Not so much. The Robber Barons

had control of the Republican Party after the woefully inept and corrupt administration of Ulysses Grant. Mark Hanna, the Karl Rove behind McKinley, was wholly a creature of the Robber Barons.

TR was picked to be McKinley's VP because he was a war hero (San Juan Hill and all), incredibly famous and had a reputation as a reformer. He was there to pick up reformists who would not otherwise vote for McKinley. TPTB of the time never had any intention of letting TR near the White House. History worked out differently, I am pleased to say. TR was a giant and took a special delight in poking the eyes of "malefactors of great wealth."

[TlalocW]

65. It seemed to me that the spark

Was the beginnings of unionization in the early 1900s. These people, "ordained by God," were miffed that the little people were speaking up, wanting more say in their destiny, instead of sitting back and letting the fat cats decide what was best for them.

TlalocW

[Johonny]

94. me too

and you had civil service reform. As government jobs went from being jobs for the elite and their friends to jobs for the everyman the view of government radically changed.

[spinbaby]

44. The sane ones have been driven out

Even recently we still had some relatively sane Republicans. Chuck Hagel and Voinovich of Ohio come to mind. They're now "retired," probably because they couldn't stand how batshit crazy their party had become.

[LynneSin]

45. Absolutely NOT!!!

Remember the republican party was conservative not because of social issues but because they believed in smaller governments with less interference on the people. Some of the best politicians out there EVER were republicans including Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhowser and Teddy Roosevelt. I think if DUers were around when these presidents were running for office we would have voted them.

[lumberjack_jeff]

49. The republicans are putting the line in the wrong place.

Urban/rural. Labor/capital. Fundamentalist christian/reformers. Those are the traditional fault lines of us politics. Republicans have found that they can add people to their capital/fundamentalist/rural coalition by pandering to the crazies. By crazy, I mean people who really don't care about facts at all, only their gut instinct is of any value. It can be demonstrably inconsistent with actual reality, but by God, I'm entitled to my own facts.

In the long run, this will lose some of their support, because although the existing coalition thinks of the crazies as useful tools, eventually they will chafe from the association because the crazies are taking over their party.

[CK_John]

50. I remember Joe Mac from WI, John Birch and Impeach Earl Warren.

Father Conklin and his Detroit radio show, the nazi support groups, and Dewey and his religious zealots.

I don't think their core changed just society is just more out front and in your false culture.

[kemah]

54. The John Birch society founded by Koch brothers father are the group

The Birchers and the Tea Party both of the same thoughts have taken over the GOP, with the help of the Christian right.
Charles Buckley outwitted them, which is pretty is to do, but they have come back. Funded by the Kochs

[Lebam in LA]

56. No n/t

[seabeyond]

58. no. but then, christianity was not this extreme, either. nt

[CrispyQ]

59. I think it's a combo.

First they courted the Dixicrats, then they courted the religious fundies. The combo of the two has taken the party to a place they never anticipated. I think they would love to shake off the teabaggers, but they can't win without them.

When you lie with dogs, you get up with fleas.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

60. The lunatic fringe has been around for as long as I can remember

(the '60s). The organized part of that fringe was represented mainly by the John Birch Society, but at that time everybody else, including the mainstream Republicans, acknowledged that they were a fringe group. In the last 40 years the Birchers, the anti-tax crowd, the racists that defected from the Dem party (Dixiecrats) during the civil rights movement, plus the evangelicals, who got to be a political force during the Reagan years, have finally congealed into the ugly lump that is now the mainstream GOP.

[ElboRuum]

61. No. n/t

[ladjf]

63. No. They are definitely going crazy. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

67. No, the GOP is undergoing the same process as the Whig party

and they are the modern incarnation of the know nothings.

Nixon, St. Reagan, Bush Sr... at this point I think Bush Jr. would never be nominated by the party.

[wryter2000]

68. Hell, no

I'd love to have Eisenhower back. Nixon was paranoid and a crook, but his policies were sane enough. The insanity began with Reagan. That's when they realized they could become divorced from reality and still win elections. In fact, reality was a hindrance to what they wanted to do. Then, Gingrich decided nastiness was an asset, too.

[harpslay]

70. Lincoln

Lincoln was a pretty crazy republican for his time .... well for half the country anyway

[grasswire]

73. don't forget the influence of talk radio

Pandering to the worst instincts of low-information people. Propagandizing into their ears every day, every hour.

This is the culmination of a propaganda blitz of many decades. Many people who would otherwise be more decent have been taught to hate and fear. They have been exploited by psychopaths like Karl Rove and Rush.

[Warren Stupidity]

75. Nixon started the modern march to whackadoodle nutjobbery.

Reagan opened the gates. Bush (dimson) tore down the walls. The rest is history. The nutjobbery is coupled with the vast corruption of unrestrained corporate greed. It is a toxic mix.

The Republican reign from the civil war to the Great Depression was not exactly devoid of lunacy, but mostly it was the precursor to the current kleptocracy. The other Gilded Age.

[Egalitarian Thug]

76. The republicans have been the party of change since its founding. n/t

[chelsea0011]

77. Roe v. Wade sent them over the edge and fundies started taking

over the party.

[jwirr]

78. I remember watching them at convention when Eisenhower was nominated. The seeds have been

there for a long time - they have never been extremely concerned about the needs of the poor or minorities. The seeds have grown and matured in 1980 the welfare queen was born. Their support for the MIC has grown in the same way. This growth has to be stopped or we are headed straight for fascism.

[Lint Head]

79. I remember reasonable Republicans. They have gone the way of the DoDo Bird.

[salvorhardin]

80. Read the 1956 Republican Party Platform and you tell me

Among other things, some good, some not so good, the 1956 Republican Platform touted as benefits the raising of the minimum wage and the expansion of social security. It advocated for equal pay regardless of sex, collective bargaining, job safety, strengthening unemployment insurance, laws to protect employee benefit plans (i.e. pensions), strengthening the 8-hour workday laws, strengthening the FDA...

Well, that's just a sampling. Read the full platform here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25838

[mahina]

81. No. Now...

I think the Kochs of the world are investing in and leveraging influence on the party as a vehicle for the tax and other policy outcomes that they want. I don't see the Tea people (I won't use their focus-group-tested term) as grass-roots at all but as a created astroturf outreach. Obvious, I know.

There have to be Rs who do some critical thinking and consider alternatives including us. For this reason I find it helpful to avoid calling them names like repigs, repukes, etc. We should be open to reasoning with those people. Some of these walls are of our own creation.

We could be looking at a new political reality pretty soon. Lets make sure we do all possible to prevent that.

How about DU ers hosting intergenerational conversations on choice, with our kupuna (elder) women tellling how it was when contraception was illegal and women died from botched illegal. abortion?

[pepperbear]

83. yes. the difference today is that the wingnuttery is at the forefront and moderation is fringe.

used to be the opposite.

[IDemo]

85. Nope, not even close.

I've been politically aware since the Nixon years and voted for the first time in '76 forCarter. From the Reagan era forward, the slide rightward and downward began taking off. The Contract with America bunch, religious activists and Limbaugh accelerated it in the 90's and gained full steam ahead during the Bush reign. The Tea baggers, Faux News and the internet have spread the madness far and wide. This really is a different time we live in.

[Zoeisright]

91. No.

The idiocy started in the 1960s and really took off with that asshat Reagan.

[Populist_Prole]

92. No. More short fused now, At least then they could disagree with you without getting enraged at you

I'm speaking more of conservatives in general than republicans as such, especially as it relates to before the 80's.

[Marr]

93. They used to call the crazies the "Birch Society" wing, and they were marginalized.

They've slowly become a dominant portion of the party, and impossible to just push into line. I'd say it's a result of decades of courting the religious right and using extremist talk radio to mobilize support.

[Stinky The Clown]

95. What a terrific series of responses.

Thanks to all for some thoughtful replies.

[Blue_In_AK]

96. There were always nutty Republicans,

e.g., John Birchers, but before Reagan, they were considered fringe. Now they're mainstream. If I were a "moderate" Republican these days, I would change my party affiliation to nondeclared.

[FarCenter]

97. Both parties have their share of nuts and wackos

Since there are only two parties, the nuts and wackos line up with one or the other.

Examples would be the anti-GMO radicals in the Democratic party and the AGW deniers in the Republican party.

However, the nuts and wackos in the Republican party appear to be more dangerous, more likely to be elected to office, and more likely to attempt to change public policy to the detriment of the country.

[LeftishBrit]

98. To my knowledge, there have always been a significant number of RW Republican nuts...

with Joe McCarthy perhaps being the most noted example.

But the worst examples of Republican looniness tend to occur when the economic-right extremism of some traditional Republicans meets the ultra-racism of what were the Dixiecrats/ Boll Weevil Democrats. This has early origins, from when the Democrats were persuaded to accept the stolen election of 1876 in return for the Republicans ceasing to interfere with segregation and racist policies in the former Confederate states. But it became much more marked when former Dixiecrats switched parties after the 1960s civil rights legislation. And then the 'Moral Majority' brought religious nuttery into the mix in the 80s, making things even worse.

Nevertheless, there seem to have been some liberal and moderate Republicans until very recently. Jeffords left the party only in the early 2000s; and I understand that the last two liberal Supreme Court Justices to retire were nominally Republican, or at least appointed by Republicans.

I could a tale unfold about the loonification of the British Conservative Party under Thatcher; but that is for another post.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

100. It's evolved over the decades

I don't want to overly romanticize the Republicans of the postwar era -there were a lot of awful Republicans like McCarthy and his ilk and those involved in the Lester Hunt affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_C._Hunt. But it is nevertheless noting that the Republicans of the 1940s-1960s were still very progressive on issues such as civil rights

Indeed, if you go to a website such as
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes
And look at all the voting records for all the respective civil rights acts (1957, 1960, 1964 and 1965, 1968 et all), you'll find that most of the Republicans -even the very conservative ones -voted for them. Indeed, even in 1968, after many of the Goldwater conservatives had been elected to Congress, many of them still kept voting for civil rights legislation. Goldwater himself softened his anti-civil rights stance he had taken in 1964 and supported some civil rights legislation after he returned to the Senate in 1968

Then if you look at the congressional voting records from the Almanac of American Politics in the 1970s -during and after the Nixon era -you see that Republicans had become more conservative but there were still many who held liberal to moderate positions on social and foreign policy issues (for example quite a few voted against Nixon's bombing of Cambodia and for busing, if my memory serves me correctly). So they were becoming more conservative but they were still comparatively moderate. You got the odd nut (John Schmitz anyone?) but most of them still fell within the mould of moderate mainstream conservatism

After the Reagan Revolution, there was a further shift to the right in terms of Republican ideology. But going through Almanac of American Politics books from that era, you still find that even many of the conservative Reagan-era Republicans for quite moderate on some social and foreign policy issues. For example, a considerable proportion of them voted for comprehensive immigration reform (something they won't touch) now and several of them voted to override President Reagan's veto and impose sanctions on apartheid-era South Africa. And there were still a sufficient number of liberal to moderate Republicans in the party

After the Republican Revolution in the 1990s, the descent into right wing madness started in great earnest. Most of the new Republican class had inherited the worst of Reagan's values and beliefs and that had been combined with the right-wing zealotry of Gingrich and his Contract with America. Added to that, an influx of very right wing Republicans came in from the South -where they had taken over traditional Democratic strongholds. The Republicans of this era were a lot more confrontational and ideologically partisan. This trend continued over the Bush years and were aided by Republicans taking over legislatures in places like Georgia and Texas and gerrymandering congressional districts in that state to let in even more extremist Republicans

And then John McCain thrust Palin into the spotlight and then we had the tea party rise and now even the Gingrich/Bush era Republicans are considered moderate compared to them. Combined with the antics of the Koch brothers/Adelson lackeys and you have the current crop of extremists, crazies and fascist wannabes.

It's all very frightening how things have evolved

[madrchsod]

101. no.....

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

103. Well....

Here's the thing. A portion of the American public has always been somewhat unhinged. I think we all had the nutty uncle who was forever spouting crap about fluoride in the water and getting the United States out of the United Nations. He was the guy we tried not to sit next to at the family reunion.

Today, your nutty uncle is the Chairman of the County GOP Committee, and one of his equally nutty friends from down at the coffee shop is running for Congress.

So in my opinion, they are crazier than they were before. It's just that through talk radio and Fox News their opinions, which use to be so far out on the fringe that nobody really paid attention to them, have now become the mainstream of the Republican Party.

[rasputin1952]

105. No, the first Republican was Lincoln...

hardly a radical conservative. Grant was pretty decent, (his cabinet was a nightmare though). Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive R, he was far more to the left considering what we are seeing these days.

Every president has had his flaws, just as every person has his/her flaws, the problem is, when in a position of power, regardless of party, presidents tend to allow themselves the "luxury" of allowing the flaws to override their better nature.

Eisenhower's "genius" was delegating authority to those around him that could get the job done. He was pretty good at finding people that could deal with multiple problems and he used them to the best advantage. He was conciliatory and had a knack for bringing opposing forces together on so that many problems could be dealt with without the usual flaps and floundering.

Nixon did some good, but his flaws were blatantly obvious, there is some talk that his apparent paranoia had a greater impact on his decisions than previously thought. Nixon was not a stupid man by any means, he had some serious issues though.

Ford was an all around decent man, not all that bright, but a "good guy".

Reagan was an idiot. His function was to be a conduit for those who actually wrote and enforced stringent ideology, (incredibly, the GOP emphatically states it despises everything "Hollywood", yet embraced a B grade actor as a kind of messiah). Reagan's claim to fame is to stick to the script he was handed...his first major flaw became apparent after the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. He pulled out, essentially lighting the the fuse that would become our current problems in the Middle East.

Poppy Bush was a dud, he strolled into the WH promising "no new taxes", blew that and was off to the political dust-bin, another dim-bulb that burned out while in office.

bush II...'nuff said.

The 19th and early 20th century R's were not a bad group per se, Harding and Coolidge were duds, setting up the economy for a free fall into the Great Depression, for which Hoover took the fall. Hoover was not a bad guy, but his cabinet set the stage for even more disaster. Hoover was a great organizer and did quite a bit to alleviate suffering during a few of the situation that came about after he was out of office.

The GOP accepted a radical agenda under Reagan, they have consistently moved to the Right until there is no wiggle room left at all. One of the profound problems w/this is that the D's have followed suit in the misguided belief that the country have moved to the Right when in reality the majority of Americans are middle of the road citizens that actually lean left.

The bat-shit crazy world of Romney/Ryan is about to be turned upside down...they are on the long path to losing, they touch an issue and it ignites, women people of color and a host of other citizens in affinity groups have written them off.

If Obama got away from his war stance, he has a chance of going down as a good president, the ball is in his court, if he pursues a line where citizens are helped and he ends the wars, he can make an impact. I'm not holding my breath though, he's been a dismal failure in many areas, he maintains some popularity which should hand him the election.

Thing that gets me, there are some 350 million citizens in this nation...this is the best we can up with?